Badruddin Umar
Badruddin Umar was a Bangladeshi Marxist–Leninist theorist, political activist, historian, writer, intellectual and leader of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist–Leninist) (Umar). His father, Abul Hashim, was a prominent politician in the Indian subcontinent.
Early life,
Umar was born on 20 December 1931 to a Bengali family of Muslim zamindars in the village of Kashiara in Burdwan district, Bengal Presidency, British India. Although his father Abul Hashim and grandfather Abul Kasem opposed the Pakistan Movement, Hashim decided to move to East Pakistan and settled in Dhaka in 1950.Education
Umar received his MA in philosophy from University of Dhaka and his BA Honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from University of Oxford.Career
Umar began his academic career as a teacher at University of Dhaka on a temporary basis. In 1963, he joined Rajshahi University as the founder-chair of the political science department. He also founded the department of sociology at the same university, but he resigned from his university positions during the hostile times of the then East Pakistan governor Abdul Monem Khan to become increasingly more active and engaged as a full-time leftist political activist and public intellectual to fight for the cause of oppressed peasants and workers in Bangladesh.Activism and politics
As a follower of Marxist–Leninist principles, Umar began writing anti-colonial articles from the 1970s. In the 1960s he wrote three groundbreaking books—Sampradayikata, Sanskritir Sankat, and Sanskritik Sampradayikata —that theorise the dialectics of the political culture of 'communalism' and the question of Bengali nationalism, thus making significant intellectual contributions to the growth of Bengali nationalism itself. In 1969, Umar joined the East Pakistan Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist), and from February 1970 to March 1971, Umar edited the mouthpiece of the EPCP —Shaptahik Ganashakti—which published essays and articles about the problems and prospects of the communist movement in Pakistan. He was president of both Bangladesh Krishak Federation and Bangladesh Lekhak Shibir—the country's oldest organisation of progressive writers, intellectuals, and cultural activists. He was President of the Jatiya Mukti Council.According to Umar, 80% to 90% of the written history of the 1971 war is false. He also stated that Sheikh Mujib wanted to be Prime Minister of Pakistan and that there were many self-contradictory statements in his 7th March speech.
Since 2009, the Awami League government has maintained a tight grip on Bangladesh, akin to an octopus, for over fifteen years. However, the people have now attained a level of freedom through a popular uprising that has not been experienced since 1972. Among the various mass uprisings that have occurred here since 1952, the uprising in July is the most extensive, profound, and aggressive against the rulers.